King.com, the leading casual social games company, today announces that it is establishing a new development studio in Barcelona. King.com also announces that it has hired mobile and social games veteran Manel Sort to head the new studio. Manel most recently was Vice President and General Manager at Digital Chocolate, leading game development in their Barcelona office including the iOS game Galaxy Life Pocket Adventures. King.com is planning to build a staff of more than 40 employees working on mobile and casual social games titles in Barcelona.

‘King.com has quickly established itself in the casual social games space with more than 40 million monthly players and 3 billion monthly gameplays,’ said Riccardo Zacconi, co-founder and CEO of King.com. ‘We have been aggressively hiring the best talent in the industry to extend our growth into the mobile games sector, and Manel, with his phenomenal games-development talent and leadership experience, is perfect for leading our newest studio.’

Manel joins the company from Digital Chocolate as VP and GM of their Barcelona studio where games such as Galaxy Life, MMA Pro Fighter and Millionaire City were developed under his leadership. He has over 12 years of multi-platform experience in the video game industry and led more than 60 titles across several platforms. Manel previously worked with Microjocs, Team17, Asylum Entertainment, Codemasters and Dinamic Multimedia. He holds a master of science in computer games programming from the University of Westminster (with distinction).

"King.com is growing rapidly and is showing great innovation in cross-platform games, particularly with the new Bubble Witch Saga mobile app,’ said Manel. ‘I am looking forward to building a great team in sunny Barcelona to help the company build new casual social franchises.’